


We Are Women

by thomasjeffersonsmacaroni



Series: The Other 51 [28]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Feminism, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, International Women's Day, Prose Poem, Women's History Month
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 19:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10169741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thomasjeffersonsmacaroni/pseuds/thomasjeffersonsmacaroni
Summary: What we were, and what we are, and what we will be.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prose poetry isn't exactly my strong suit and neither is feminism (I only started identifying as one recently, and before that I was unfortunately one of those edgy "feminism is cancer" types), but I wanted to do /something/ to celebrate International Women's Day.

We are women.

That is all I can truly say that encompasses us all.

"We have vaginas" is cisnormative. "We're the weaker sex" is ridiculous and far, far outdated. "We have centuries of oppression behind us" is...technically true. It is a diverse oppression, and one that cannot be considered without a concept of intersectionality in mind, but it is an oppression that encompasses us all nonetheless.

We were considered weak, banished home to gather and to bear children and to cook and clean (this varied across the years). We were denied the right to vote, denied the right to be engineers or scientists or anything we wanted to be, slut-shamed for sleeping with more than one guy while men could freely have dozens of mistresses without a second thought.

We were the primary victims of Salem's witch hunt just for being outspoken and confident in ourselves, traits that would be praised if they existed in men but that got  _us_ put in jail and burned at the stake.

We were attacked. But nevertheless, we persisted.

You gave us abuse and hatred, and we gave you Joan of Arc, Empress Wu, Margaret Hamilton, and so, so many other women who stabbed a spear into the flow of history and shifted it forever.

Sometime at the beginning of the 20th century, we were given the right to vote only after arrests and propaganda and intense sexism. And ignorant people said that our fight should have been over there. But it was far from being over.

We continued to be catcalled on the streets, continued to be harassed in the workplace, continued to be told to get our brothers and our fathers and the men in our lives to do jobs that we were perfectly capable of doing on our own. There is still a glass ceiling above us, one that we have as of yet failed to break, and perhaps may never break, but we can at least try our very hardest. We continue, even now, to be put down for our interests, whether they be traditionally girly ("Oh, just another whore wearing makeup!") or traditionally masculine ("Oh, you like the Avengers? Do you know their real names?").

And when we are abused, or raped, instead of blaming the person who literally fucking hurt us, it is _us_ who are blamed, as people reach and reach and reach for reasons why _we_ are at fault instead of grabbing the low-hanging fruit and blaming our abusers.

And that is why we have feminism. But even feminism has problems with a lack of the intersectionality that any good feminism requires. We're not all straight white privileged ladies, you know!

We are women of color. We are queer women. We are trans women. We are disabled, we are homeless, we are hijabis, and every single one of us, every single stripe in the female rainbow, must be taken and considered separately for any kind of progress to work out.

We must never give up, despite the struggles we face from both the outside and the inside. Instead, we must unite with our sisters, extend a hand and unite with our brothers, fight against the oppression we have faced and will face. And today especially, we must celebrate our womanhood and not condemn it.

We are not sluts or whores or bitches. We are not teases, we are not to blame for our abuse, we are not committing a crime by getting an abortion. We are not prudes, or fake geek girls, or vapid shallow airheads trying to impress men. We are not victims, _will never_ be victims to the struggles that we face around the world.

We are women. And that is a term that encompasses us all.


End file.
